In My Wake: A Breathtaking Psychological Thriller With a Killer Twist Read online

  Copyright

  © Copyright Ruth Harrow 2020

  Ruth Harrow has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this work.

  All rights are reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior permission of the publishers.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  ISBN: 9798640735437

  Also by Ruth Harrow

  You're All Mine: A Dark and Twisty Psychological Thriller You Can't Put Down

  In Her Footsteps: A Gripping Psychological Thriller With a Breathtaking Twist

  Contents

  Copyright

  Also by Ruth Harrow

  Contents

  Prologue

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  32

  33

  34

  35

  36

  37

  38

  39

  40

  41

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  43

  44

  45

  46

  47

  48

  49

  50

  51

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  53

  54

  55

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  57

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  60

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  64

  65

  66

  67

  68

  Author's Note

  Also By Ruth Harrow

  Prologue

  I am disconnected. Detached from time, from my sense of fear; from any sense of anything. I hardly even feel cold in the rushing breeze that lifts the hem of my thin dust jacket as I walk along the bridge.

  Black water churns below me. I can hear it gurgling and chattering, calling me closer with icy lips.

  The faintest trace of apprehension scratches at my insides as I reach the place, but I remind myself of why I am doing this. Even if I blocked the messages, even if my tormentor was to disappear all of a sudden, I know there is no getting away from it.

  Not really.

  I'm sick of the nightmares. I'm tired of never being able to sleep easily at night. I want the voices to go away.

  I was once blessed with an opportunity to bring joy and life into my world, but I let it go. How different would things have been if I'd had a little light to revolve my life around? I've never regretted the loss of anything more; the memory haunts me increasingly with each passing day.

  Now I just want some peace.

  I clamber up over the railings that are designed to keep people in; keep them safe.

  A chatter of voices echoes upon the cold steel all around me and I look up. A young couple in their late teens walks, arm-in-arm. The boy says something and they both giggle, sharing a knowing, secret smile. I wonder what other secrets they share as they walk away beyond the dim glow of the street light and disappear into the darkness.

  I am all alone now.

  I turn back to the bridge railings and I peer down into the black water. The wind lifts my hair. I have no idea how long I stare into the black nothingness.

  But I know that I want it.

  I climb up higher until there is no amount of hard steel to hold me in. Nothing to keep me safe. There is no going back.

  One slip and I am gone forever.

  I teeter on the edge and wait for my moment.

  1

  I know I can't cry. If I break down now I won't be able to make it through the service. And even though I am the sister of the deceased and not a parent, I feel like I'm in charge. After all, I knew April better than our mum and dad ever did, no matter how far apart we drifted as adults.

  We were well taken care of during our childhood, yet at the same time, left to our own devices a lot. Perhaps because our parents thought we had each other, that we would be safe.

  I would like to think I would never be so naive with my own daughter, Eva.

  The disbelief that settled in my chest as soon as the news of April's death washed over me still hasn't abated.

  Will read aloud the stages of grief again on the drive over here last night. He scrolled down the webpage on his phone from the passenger seat as I stared at the road ahead, barely hearing him. I love my husband, but sometimes I just wish we could have an interaction where his phone isn't involved.

  Eva was in the back of the car, absorbed in something on her own phone. By the colourful glow that lit up her delicate features, I guessed she was playing some new game or other. I can't keep up with what she is into from one week to the next. I wish she wouldn't waste so much of her time on a screen.

  'It doesn't say how long each stage takes though ...' Will said, staring at his phone with his smooth, still-boyish, yet bearded face illuminated too as we wound around wide country lanes and dark hedgerows. 'I think you've been in denial for too long. Wait, what am I doing? This isn't even the official NHS website. Hang on a sec ...'

  I was only able to see a short stretch of road in front of me; our headlights illuminated the grey country roads flanked on each side by tall hedges

  Every now and then a small bird would zoom from one side to the other, or a rabbit would dart wildly into the shrubbery as we flew past on the way to our home village. My fingers dug into the rough leather of the steering wheel at the thought of hitting one of the small creatures. Their soft bodies would have made a thud against the swift metal of our Qashqai and that would be the end.

  A pointless waste of life. Just like April.

  I let Will read quotes from the website to me for most of the journey, only half hearing him, the core of my mind elsewhere.

  At the moment, I find I am flitting between total denial and something far worse; the thought that I should have done something more for my sister while she was still alive. How could I have guessed that she was suicidal? I still can't believe she was the type.

  I should have been there to help her.

  I take a deep breath and swallow hard.

  A voice murmurs towards me through the small church. 'How're you feeling, Hannah?'

  I turn to see the Little Bishopsford's vicar approaching where I stand near the front of the church hall.

  Reverend Walker has been in charge of this church as far back as I remember, tending dutifully to his congregation over the years. It occurs to me as he reaches the altar how little he has aged. Despite his white hair and a light crinkling of his face and hands, the Reverend looks almost exactly how I remember him.

  'I'm fine,' I say, thinking my voice sounds too high-pitched. My vocal cords must be pulled more taut than usual, working around the lump in my throat.


  He peels back the foil on a fresh pack of Polo mints and proffers it forward to let me take one.

  'Thank you.'

  'I know nothing I say can help to ease the pain you are feeling at the moment, Hannah. You know, it is times like this that we struggle to understand the way the world works and why things happen the way they do. To lose a family member so unexpectedly must at the moment seem like an unimaginably senseless thing to endure. You probably know what I'm going to say though, don't you?'

  I move the mint aside with my tongue. 'That God has a plan?'

  He nods his head and smiles and I find myself returning a weak imitation of the gesture. Nevertheless, I feel slightly better.

  He picks up a stack of white order of service booklets for the ceremony and moves away to start distributing them to the empty seats.

  'Here, let me,' I say, taking them from him.

  'Ah, Hannah you shouldn't really. It keeps me fit walking up and down these aisles, you know. The day I won't be able to any more will be a very sad one for me.'

  I move along the identical rows of wooden seats, neatly placing a folded paper leaflet on each one so that April's serene smile faces me from many directions.

  When it actually came down to it, neither myself nor my parents owned a recent photograph of April. I shamefully hadn't seen much of her in the last ten years or so, let alone taken photos. Only in recent weeks have I found out that she had kept my parents at a similar distance.

  The only pictures we had are the ones I had taken at a family barbecue over a decade ago. I dug out my old laptop and clicked through them, eyes welling with tears so that I could hardly see the screen. In each image, a digital representation of April was displayed in a black strappy top and clinging jeans and I couldn't find a shot where she wasn't standing too close to anyone to get a good clean crop. Besides, none of them had seemed appropriate somehow.

  In the end, we decided the profile picture from April's Facebook account would be the most fitting. We couldn't access the original. Nobody could find her phone anywhere in her apartment and her laptop was password protected. Will works in computer repair, but even he couldn't get around it. We eventually ended up downloading it from her public profile.

  I can't define why, but it made me feel cold to have to do such a thing, as though I was some kind of stalker or deviant. As though I was stealing an image I had no right to take.

  It was a beautiful photograph of April; it captured her essence, her beauty. Although people often said that we looked alike, my sister had been the one truly blessed with natural good looks.

  In the photograph in front of me, April's glossy, amber-coloured hair is highlighted perfectly with softly glowing gold. The tops of her arms are straight and elegantly slender. Her clothing, too, whilst modest, leaves us to assume a toned physique lies beneath.

  The colours of the background hinted of autumn reds and oranges, even though they have been muted now by the black and white monotone of the photocopier for the service booklets. I kept a copy of the picture on my phone though and plan to treasure it.

  I remember seeing a professional photographer in her friends list on Facebook. Was he the one that had taken this picture?

  As I lay the last booklet upon the seat in the back row, I stop and look down again at my sister's radiant face, trying to look for some sign of what she was going to do. A gentle smile plays upon her lips, almost as though she is sharing an in-joke with the photographer.

  Again, I wonder who actually took the shot. I'm assuming it was a boyfriend of hers, but I didn't know a great deal about her private life in recent years.

  I smile to myself, thinking of when we were children, of the times when I would sit cross-legged on the end of her bed as she would tell me every last detail of her various encounters with boys at school. I would sit enraptured; hanging on her every word.

  Before I went to sleep last night I counted the number of occasions I had seen my sister in the last twelve years. It couldn't have been more than a handful.

  My stomach twists again with guilt.

  2

  I draw my gaze up from the photograph just as the first attendees start to arrive. People file in gradually over the next twenty minutes. Most faces I recognise, albeit long forgotten; lined and paler than I remember, like faded copies of the younger versions. Nevertheless, they are the same villagers I knew as a child in Little Bishopsford.

  Most village children, like April, Will and myself, grew up, left for Uni or work and never came back. Young, unfamiliar faces arrive too; they introduce themselves as April's colleagues from the office in which she worked. Others are casual acquaintances. I nod to each one as they arrive, planting a horribly forced smile on my face I utterly hate. The alternative, however, is to risk tears so I leave on this stiff and uncomfortable mask instead.

  As the rows fill up to capacity, I find it odd that there aren't really any closer friends of April's and not a boyfriend or partner in sight. My mother was in charge of letting people know. The lack of April's smartphone meant Mum had struggled. She was unable to find anyone who knew April on a truly personal level to invite today.

  Mum put an obituary in the local village press, but couldn't get anything for the bigger papers in the city.

  It is a sign of the times that the ageing residents of Little Bishopsford were likely to still read the newspaper. Judging by the look of April's colleagues, my first impression is that they wouldn't consider reading anything that wasn't presented to them in digital format.

  The rows of wooden seats are now bubbling with streams of neat, black Sunday-best as people shake hands and their heads as they remark at the tragedy of it all.

  The only time I have ever seen this hall this busy was for a neighbour's daughter when she came back to the village to get married. April and I had been delighted to be the only children thought well-behaved enough to attend an otherwise adults-only event. We were even allowed the day off school.

  I glance across to Eva sitting beside my mother near the front. She looks bored by the conversation with her grandmother and I can tell her hand is itching for her phone. She only met April fleetingly once or twice in her young life and the two never really had an occasion to really bond.

  Many heads, particularly those with monochrome, grey and white hair turn in my direction every now and then. I pretend I don't notice. In fact, I would actually be tempted to take up a seat right at the back of the church to avoid curious eyes if there was any room. Instead, I walk up the aisle swiftly and take my place on the front row in between my father and husband.

  Will, I notice seems to be getting a lot of stares too, although there seems to be something a little less friendly than curiosity behind the looks in his case.

  Another stab of guilt attacks my insides.

  The general murmuring of subdued conversations quietens rapidly as the Reverend takes up his place at the altar.

  He tidies his papers in front of him unnecessarily, as though this is the first part of the act he must have honed and performed many times over the years. When he speaks too, I can picture how he must have said these words or very close variants to so many other church-loads of people.

  'It is a very sombre event indeed when a life is lost, particularly one so young and so full of potential. Those that knew her appreciated that April was a beautiful soul. Full of warmth, compassion and love for her family and friends.' Reverend Walker gestures to where I sit beside my father and Will.

  On the row behind me, my mother lets out a single sob and out of the corner of my eye, I see Paul, her new husband, hand her a tissue that seems overly white in the mass of black.

  The scale of the falling out my parents had years ago was so great that they can't even bring themselves to sit on the same row for their own daughter's funeral. On many details, they used me as a go-between whilst making arrangements; they struggled to agree on anything.

  The worst disagreement was over burial or cremation. That took weeks of constant bic
kering to resolve whilst waiting for the search operation to recover a body from the river.

  One wasn't found, however. In the end, the recovery teams were recalled and Mum and Dad didn't resolve their disagreement.

  In a way it was lucky April had been spotted by witnesses up on that bridge. Her office ID card was also found near the spot she had jumped; it must have slipped from her pocket as she had clambered over the railings. I wonder where we would all be now if she hadn't lost that card. What if she had simply gone missing? Vanished without a trace. We might never have known what had happened to her.

  The thought causes me to physically shiver.

  I look up ahead at the empty casket surrounded by sombre blooms and consider the fact that my sister never even got a say in all this; she never made any such plans. Of course she didn't; she was only forty-one years old.

  The lump in my throat strains and feels fit to burst again. I take a deep breath and pick up the order of service booklet beside me; I stare at it with watering eyes and wish I had more of the Polo left than a vague minty aftertaste. Now I try my best to avoid seeing the picture of April and focus on the swirling, decorative text on the cover, but I still feel her eyes boring into me.

  In Loving Memory of

  April Louise Hampton

  I stare at the elegant typeface Mum selected, trying to block everything else out. I can't break down now. I need to grieve in the safety of solitude. I've never been one to crave attention, always been happy to stay in the background. April was the one who loved to bathe in the heat of the spotlight.

  A communal rustling from all around tells me that everyone is opening their individual booklets and I'm still staring at the cover, willing myself not to cry.

  I quickly turn the page, aware that by my side, Will gives me a scrutinising gaze.

  The first item is the eulogy that Mum arranged for the Reverend to read aloud. She put herself in charge of getting the booklets done; it made sense since Paul owns a printing shop over in Milton Keynes.